by Linda Moore
“Okay. Leave it with me. I’ll figure out a way to meet him. But, I have to be by myself to make the call,” she said. “It’s not just pretend, right. I have to get into it. I’ll do it tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s set up.”
I could see McBride was a little nonplussed by Sophie’s take-charge approach, but he didn’t argue.
“Sorry to cut this short, but I have to get to work on Ophelia’s mad scene now,” she said. “I’ll see you at rehearsal Roz.”
That was it. We were out of there.
Once home, I got out the card that Eloise Radner had given me for the lawyer, Harvie Greenblatt. It wasn’t five o’clock yet and with any luck I could set up a meeting with him for the following day. He was part of a firm that was notable for taking on high-profile civil rights cases and winning. No wonder he’d had a strong connection with Peter King. However, the secretary who answered said Harvie had recently left the firm and had gone to work for the Public Prosecution Service as a Crown Attorney. “We miss him,” she said, giving me his new number. When I called I got his voicemail. I left a message, mentioning both Eloise Radner and Peter King, and asked him to call me back as soon as possible.
I went down to the kitchen to find something to munch on while working my way through the next section of Hamlet. The brutal Gertrude/Hamlet scene was coming up and I needed to look it over. “One egg and the heel of a loaf of sourdough. Looks like it’s a fried egg sandwich,” I said to the cat, who, in her customary style, materialized out of nowhere. She had clearly been down for her afternoon nap and was stretching, with her long fur every which way. I bent over and scratched her chin. She rubbed herself against my legs, and went and sat by her dish.
“You are endless,” I said. “Well, there are crunchies here. I promise I’ll go to the store on the way home from rehearsal.” I filled her dish and changed her water. She looked long-suffering as she chewed.
I brought the egg sandwich to my desk and opened Hamlet to Act 3, Scene 4. I read through the rapid exchange between Gertrude and Polonius interrupted by Hamlet’s offstage battle cry, “Mother, Mother, Mother!” Polonious then secretes himself behind the arras, and as I read Hamlet’s entrance line, “Now mother, what’s the matter?” the phone jangled. It was McBride.
“I’m just about to leave for the airport,” he said. I could hear anxiety in his voice.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s my son,” he said.
“Something’s happened to Alex?”
“He was on a school ski trip at Whistler and he’s had an accident. He’s being airlifted to Vancouver.”
“Oh my god,” I said. “It must be serious.”
“I think he’s broken a bone in his leg—sounds like his femur.”
“That’s major,” I said. “God, ski trips! Why? The only time I went on one, I got drunk and froze my hands.”
“Yeah, I’ve got some stories too. Anyway, Carol is very worried, so I’ve gotta go.”
“Of course. Do you want me to drive you out?”
“No thanks Roz. I’ll take Ruby and leave her in the parking lot so whenever I get back, I can just drive myself in. But you could do me a favour and take Molly over to Sophie’s later tonight—she’s agreed to look after her for me.”
“Not to worry. I’ll pick Molly up at your place after rehearsal,” I said.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said and was gone before I could ask him anything else.
When I got to rehearsal they had already begun to work. Hamlet was pressing Gertrude down on her chaise and forcing her to look at the two images: one of his father, which he carried with him, and the other of his wicked uncle, which was in a locket he tore from around Gertrude’s neck.
“Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself…this was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband. Like a mildewed ear.” What a strange image, I thought. “A mildewed ear,” as though Claudius were covered with a thin coating of fungus—Shakespeare’s theme of contamination emerging in a simple description.
I ducked quickly into the green room and sat down beside Sophie, who was going over her lines.
“So McBride called you about Molly?” I said.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Terrible about his son, isn’t it. He seemed really worried.”
“It’s one of those situations,” I said. “You know—absentee dad. Whenever anything untoward happens, he’s overwhelmed with guilt on top of everything else.”
“What’s Carol like?” she asked.
“I’ve never met her. She’d moved out west before I met McBride. I met Alex a couple of summers ago when he came out for visit. Really great kid. Smart and funny, and nice, you know? I think she’s a good mom.”
“Well, let’s keep our fingers crossed that he’s going to be okay.”
“For sure,” I said. “I’d better get back in there—see how they’re doing.”
“See you later. I don’t know if we’ll even get to this scene tonight.”
“Well, in any case, why don’t you take a ride with me after rehearsal, and we can pick up Molly together and take her back to your place.”
“Thanks, Roz.”
I went back into the Crypt proper. The Ghost of Old Hamlet had just passed through Gertrude’s chamber—“Look how it steals away. My father in his habit as he lived!” Then Hamlet was instructing Gertrude to be chaste, “Do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker…Go not to my uncle’s bed. Assume a virtue if you have it not.” Upstage of them, the old espial Polonius lay dead, one arm protruding through the arras. Gertrude was being forced to see the truth and she wasn’t faring very well. “Oh Hamlet, thou has cleft my heart in twain.”
Gertrude’s plight got me ruminating once again on Daniel King’s mother, Greta, and her strange behaviour after the funeral. McBride had departed for Vancouver without telling me whether he had learned anything about Spiegle. Should I now pursue this on my own, I wondered.
“I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room. Mother goodnight.” The scene was over and the cast took a break.
Sophie was right. Ophelia’s mad scene would not be staged until the following evening. After good nights all around, she and I climbed into Old Solid to go get Molly at McBride’s.
“Everyone seems tired,” I said, commenting on the evening’s energy.
“Yes, it’s difficult to keep up the intensity. Shakespeare doesn’t really let down at all in this play. And of course most people are working at other jobs. Well, like yourself. How have things been going with the case, anyway?”
“It’s been a bit scary. I didn’t tell you when we were having tea this afternoon, but I was followed today when I drove out to the lab.”
“Oh god, really?”
“Yes, and we think it was the same car and driver who got to McBride a few nights back. We got part of the plate and McBride was planning to track him through the registry tomorrow. Actually, there were a quite a number of things he was planning to do, which are now on hold.” I knew I sounded discouraged.
“Well, I’m going to go ahead and make that call to Aziz tomorrow anyway. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“I think it would be better to wait, Sophie,” I said.
“Look, it can’t hurt to make contact. I’m into it.”
We pulled up in front of McBride’s house on Harris Street. Molly started barking as I put the key in the lock.
“It’s okay Molly, ” I said, pushing the door open. She could barely contain herself as she tried to jump up on both of us at once.
“Poor thing. She’s been alone most of the day,” Sophie said. “I bet she needs a walk. Why don’t you go on home and we’ll walk from here.”
“I don’t know. It’s quite a long way and it’s late.”
“I walk home from downtown all the time. It feels good to get some air, and it’s not even that cold. Really—go! Honestly, Roz. Go home, relax and get some sleep. You’ve had a stressful day. Come on
Molly.”
Sophie strode off towards Agricola Street with the Lab joyfully bounding along beside her.
I knew that Molly would put on a brave and noisy show if anyone tried to assault Sophie, so I let them go with no further protest. And she was right, Molly needed the walk.
As I was driving home, I remembered my pledge to the cat to pick up some soft food. It was almost eleven—too late to go the Superstore, so I stopped in at Joe’s on the way down Cornwallis and splurged on several cans of her favourite. She would be over the moon. I also got some bananas and dug deep for enough cash to buy a container of Vanilla Swiss Almond Häagen-Dazs. Why not? The night felt bleak. McBride was gone and I was in the middle of a mess of loose ends. But maybe this was a good opportunity to catch up on my homework. I had to take a look at the guest book and view the video of the funeral, and I wanted to read Peter King’s analysis of the Europa Conglomerate deal.
When I got in, the message light on the phone was flashing. The cat jumped up on my desk and straddled the phone as I hit the retrieve button.
“Hi Rosalind. Harvie Greenblatt here. I’ll be at the office until midnight—I’m preparing a couple of cases for tomorrow—so if you get in before then, don’t hesitate to give me a call, and we’ll set something up.”
“Great!” I said to the cat, whose agenda did not include me making phone calls. “Just a few more minutes. It’ll be worth it.” She didn’t look convinced. Harvie answered before the second ring.
“Greenblatt.”
“Hi, it’s Rosalind.”
“Oh…hi! Good, good, you got my message. Yeah, listen, I’d be happy to talk to you about Peter King. I’m in court tomorrow, but how about tomorrow evening?”
“Sorry I can’t. I’ll be in rehearsal,” I said.
“You’ll be in rehearsal?”
“Yeah, I’m working on a production of Hamlet,” I said.
“Really? I love Hamlet! What, are you in it or something?”
“Hardly. No. I just help them with the text. Understanding it, what the scenes are about.”
“So you’re the director.”
“No, I’m not. It’s an unusual situation but they’re doing all that themselves. What I do is just keep them clear on the meaning. Sort of like a translator, so everyone’s on the same page.”
“Okay, okay, I see—the language! That’s so interesting. Great. Well, look, let’s figure something else out. How about breakfast—8:00 a.m.?”
“Tomorrow? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, oh yeah. I never sleep. I’m always working or whatever.”
“Okay, you’re on. Where?”
“How about the Bluenose? It’s right near the law courts.”
“Perfect. I know it. See you at eight o’clock then. I’ll wear a red hat.”
“And I’ll be the one with three briefcases.”
“Okay,” I laughed. “See you soon.”
Following the call with Harvie, the cat and I indulged heartily in our store-bought treats. Then I crawled into bed and drifted off while reading Peter King’s report. When it fell forward and hit me on the nose, I woke up, set the alarm for seven o’clock, and turned off the bedside lamp.
Chapter Eleven
Someone was in the room. It was pitch dark but I could hear them putting the video into the VCR and clicking on the television. There was ominous, low organ music, and as the screen lit up, I could see a crowd gathered around a grave—but the grave was inside the church, by the altar. The two gravediggers were there too; they were busy digging. On the far side of the grave was Daniel King. He was wearing his dressing gown, weeping and pleading, “Please! Don’t bury him yet. We haven’t examined him.”
But one of the gravediggers just grinned and handed him an empty flask saying, “Your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.” Then he bent down and brought out a skull. He held it up and looked at it, and as he did, it became a floating apparition of Peter King. Suddenly, muddy water started bubbling up from the grave and gushing down the aisle between the pews. In the foreground on the lower right corner of the screen, there was a man kissing a woman while he slowly pushed her down onto the seat of the front pew. I couldn’t see their faces.
She was dressed in a black suit with a hat and veil, and she looked like Jackie Kennedy—like the funereal image of her that is etched in our collective memory. Just as she was about to slip out of sight beneath the back of the wooden pew, she gripped it with her hand. I could see her long, red-painted nails. She turned her head away from the man so she was looking right at me through the dark veil. “Get out Rosalind! No one invited you to my husband’s funeral. Just get out!”
Suddenly the man’s cellphone started ringing. He fumbled for it in his jacket pocket and finally took it out and started pushing buttons, but it rang loudly on and on. “Turn it off. This is a funeral!” someone in the crowd hissed.
“It’s not my phone. I’ve never seen it before,” he protested, staring at the ringing phone in his hand.
“It’s McBride’s. It’s McBride’s cellphone!” I shouted out to the TV, starting myself awake, sitting bolt upright in bed and fumbling to shut off the beeping alarm clock—7:00 a.m.
“Oh god, must be the ice cream,” I said to myself as the disturbing images from the dream flooded back to me. I climbed out of bed and checked to make sure the video was still in its box. “Weird.” I dragged myself into the shower and got ready to meet Harvie Greenblatt for breakfast.
The Bluenose Restaurant was crowded with busy people starting their day with bacon and eggs. As I entered, Harvie spied my red hat and stood up and waved. He was seated in a booth along the windows—streetside. His regular booth, as it turned out.
“Good, good, you’re here! Nice to meet you.” He had a warm smile and shook my hand quite vigorously. “Sit down. I got you a coffee already.”
“Excellent,” I said pouring in some milk. “So, thanks for arranging this. I mean I know you must be extremely busy—new job and all that. I don’t mean to pry but…what prompted the shift?”
“Flattery,” he said. “They courted me.” He grinned at my expression. “No, it’s the money, actually.”
“Now that really is a joke, right?”
“Yes, unfortunately, but money’s never been that important to me. I just felt like it was time to cross the floor. When I was a young defence lawyer, I wouldn’t have seen this coming, but the truth is, if you want to be really effective in getting the bad guys off the street—and go after corruption and all that nasty stuff—prosecution’s the place to be. And it suits me. But it’s so busy my head’s spinning and it’s the government, so there’s way too much red tape.”
“When Eloise told me about you,” I said, “you seemed like the person to talk to about Peter King and his involvement with the City.”
The waitress had arrived, and I put in my order for one egg, easy-over, bacon and toast. Harvie leaned towards me and said conspiratorially, “They have challah bread—get that instead, it’s better.”
“Oh sure—okay,” I nodded at the waitress and she noted it down, giving Harvie a familiar little wink as she hurried away.
“It’s not what you think,” he chuckled. “It’s just that I’m the one who got the restaurant to start offering challah. You know, like they have at The Senator in Toronto. It’s a nice option and it’s taking off.”
“Well, I’m looking forward to it. But you didn’t order. Are you eating?”
“Me? Of course I’m eating—I love to eat. I eat here so often I just nod and they bring me the usual. So tell me what you’re doing exactly…you’re looking into the sewage treatment deal?”
“You know, I’m wondering whether your new position as a prosecutor changes things. At this point in time I really need you to keep everything I say in confidence.”
“It’s my stock in trade,” he replied. “No worries.”
I spoke quietly. “I work for an investigator who’s been hired by Peter King’s son, Daniel,
to look into his father’s death. Daniel believes his father may have been murdered.”
Harvie smacked the table and started nodding intently. “Oh boy,” he pointed his finger at me emphatically. “Oh boy, this is good. I’ve been waiting for this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was amazed that the police didn’t start the ball rolling. Peter was in his prime. His work invigorated him. I can’t tell you what a horrible shock his death was. I was very troubled by it, and if I’d been working for the Crown then I might have been able to ask some questions.”
“Okay, so what can you tell me? Peter was certainly against the Europa deal. Was there anything going on at City Hall that would make you wary, anyone who might try to stop him in his tracks?”
“The thing is,” Harvie replied, “by the time Peter died, there was nothing left to stop. The conglomerate deal was toast and the City had smartly begun to make arrangements with the Water Commission to manage the plant. So what would anyone at the City have had to gain by getting rid of Peter?”
“That’s the question,” I said. “Last night I read the report that Peter prepared for Ecology Counts, and he was so articulate and so impassioned about the importance of keeping the plants in the public arena. Eloise Radner mentioned that City Staff did a major number on that report before Council saw it—really watered it down, apparently. Why would they do that?”
“That’s not unusual,” he said. “Council get so many reports, it’s common practice for staff to just highlight the main points. Councillors are free to ask for the original.”
“But do you think it’s possible that someone at the City could have had some kind of inordinate interest in this company—a monetary stake perhaps?”
“Are you married Roz?” he asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Just wondered…suddenly I wondered whether you were married or not.”
“No I’m not. Are you Harvie?”
“Divorced. I used to be married to a librarian. We’ve got a couple of kids.”
“Really. How old are they?”
“Teenagers. High school. Good—they’re good kids.”
